N O B L E B O R N

Sunday, July 11, 2010

"Where you have a plot of land, however small , plant a garden. Staying close to the soil is good for the Soul." -Spencer W. Kimball

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -Chinese Proverb

It's amazing how many things we're capable of doing if we only tried. Since being in North Carolina I've learned that I'm much more then just a photographer and artist. I'm also a Designer, Screen-printer, Carpenter, Plumber, Commercial Roofer, I would say master Soul Food Chef (that's right... MASTER SOUL FOOD CHEF) and now Watermelon farmer.

In earlier May I decided to start a garden with my grandfather. Being that the farmers who rented the land last year had such poor results with their crops, they decided not to plant anything this year leaving the whole field for us. Compared to most of the farmers in the area our garden is small, but being that it's a little more then half an acre it's larger then most gardens in the area. Most of our crops consist of watermelons, cantaloupes, tomatoes, greens, peppers, and squash.

Being that the season has been so dry and with such little rain fall we had begun to think that our garden wouldn't produce any crops. WRONG!!! WRONG!!! This past friday around 5:00a.m we decided to pick a few of the larger watermelons to test for sweetness and to try and sell. We ended up leaving with about 70 of the sweetest watermelons ever, the largest of the batch weighing about 40 pounds. They were all sold before noon!! This morning we picked our second batch of 45 melons with the largest weighing about 50 pounds. It's funny that one of the farmers who passed on the land stop by while we were pulling this morning. He couldn't believe the crops that we had produced. As he walked away disappointed that he'd passed up the land, my grandfather looks at me and laughs, he then says "hey, don't that fool know I'm the Watermelon King"?! I had to laugh because I guess that would make me the Watermelon Grand Prince.